Tuesday, April 1, 2008

Of Cakes and Connections

Of cakes..

Last Thursday evening, I baked a batch of cupcakes for my niece's birthday party. Friday morning I baked the sheet cake before going to work. I took that afternoon off to decorate the cake. I iced it with plain, white icing. After that I stamped it with a letter press. Of course, it turns out I got the T and H in birthday reversed. Oh well :)

Next, I traced a picture of the Cat in the Hat onto tracing paper and placed a piece of parchment paper over it. Then I used piping gel to place the picture on the parchment paper. Once I finished that, I flipped it over on to the cake. Most of the gel did not stick to the cake, but it did imprint in the icing enough that I could see the outlines. I went over that with black frosting and red frosting. I finished up with a red bead border.

Cherokee loved it.

I also did cupcakes in case there were people who did not care for strawberry cake.

and connections..

O'Dooley's is a center for cosmic convergences. I am there most Friday and Saturday nights, and a while back I ran into someone from high school. I thought he looked familiar and after a while when we were talking to some of the same people he recognized me and was really surprised to see me. Well, on March 21 he came in with two other guys I went to high school with: Matt Kreutzer and Cory McIlvain. I was rather surprised. They were too, because as I found out later, John did not tell them I am a regular. Another person I went to high school with was there as well.

Then last Friday we did a send off for Susan, who is shipping out to Iraq. I mention this because when she and Mike showed up on Saturday, I invited them to share the table I was at. After we talked for a while, Mike mentioned his last name was Van Doren. I asked him if he was any relation to Brian Van Doren (another guy I went to high school with), and it turns out he is Brian's younger brother. Susan this asked if I knew Sri Donepudi, and I indicated that she and Brian dated in high school. Turns out they are married now, which I think is pretty cool.

It really is a small world. Makes me wonder who I else I know from high school will show up at the pub.